It’s hard to think of a more contentious film director in recent times than Lars von Trier. Not only does he do a fine line in movies that mix art with a lot of content that’s not often palatable for the audience he seems to be aiming at, but he’s also a man who seems happy to put his foot in his mouth, either accidentally or (I suspect) in a deliberate attempt to stir up any conversation that keeps his name in the entertainment columns for a while. The only person I consider on a par with Von Trier when it comes to mixing smarts with subject matter that’s often repellant is Michael Haneke, and I think Haneke is the better film-maker by a mile.
But, be that as it may, a Von Trier film is still something that many film critics and cineastes rush to see. Whether I love his work or not, and I think he’s been on a sharp decline in the last few years, I can’t deny that he does a good job of making people want to at least see his movies before then going on to argue about them.
Nymphomaniac: Volume I (I will be reviewing the second volume shortly) is a big improvement over Melancholia, and it may even be slightly better than Antichrist, but it still suffers from Von Trier’s biggest obstacle nowadays, which is Von Trier. Because this actually has no small amount of wit and cheek throughout, I am loathe to call it pretentious, but it’s still a movie in which the main character utters the line: “Perhaps the only difference between me and other people is that I’ve always demanded more from the sunset.”
Charlotte Gainsbourg is Joe, a young woman who is found, bleeding and hurt, by a man named Seligman (Stellan Skarsgard). Seligman takes Joe back to his flat, where he makes her a cup of tea and starts trying to work out what happened to her. Unsure of where to begin, Joe eventually starts her tale from her childhood, quickly moving to her teenage years and a story full of sex, sex and, well, more sex. Joe thinks that she is a bad person, while Seligman tries to convince her that everything she is sharing is quite normal.
Gainsbourg and Skarsgard are both very good in their roles, but the real praise should be heaped on young Stacy Martin, obliged to give a performance, as the younger version of Joe, that’s almost entirely physical. Oh, Joe speaks, but this movie is about her thoughts, her lust, her way of, pardon my French here, fucking her way through life. It’s a shame that she ends up in a number of scenes opposite Shia LaBeouf, playing her first lover, who actually wouldn’t be too bad here if it wasn’t for his horribly mangled attempt at an English accent. Sophie Kennedy Clark makes a bit of an impression with her scenes, Uma Thurman and Hugo Speer are involved in a horrible sequence that doesn’t get anything right either dramatically or comedically, and Christian Slater gets his best role in years, a role so good that when he’s not onscreen you hope that he’ll be back along at some point (although, admittedly, he’s also putting on some strange accent that may make some wince).
Nymphomaniac: Volume I is not a bad film. Yes, there are lines of dialogue that spring up like the one quoted above, but there are some nice moments between Gainsbourg and Skarsgard that make up for that kind of stuff, and it’s always good to see a film about adult material that doesn’t spend too much time sniggering at everything or trying too hard to shock. Yes, that may be the biggest surprise here, it seems that Von Trier has put his movie together in a way that allows it to seem less shocking than it could be. I have no doubt that some people will still be a bit flustered, but this is a straightforward approach to the material. I wouldn’t call it tame, and there are some hardcore moments that will ensure you never sit down and watch it with your parents, but it somehow never seems outrageous.
It’s too inconsistent to be called a return to form, in my opinion, but if the second volume improves upon the foundation laid here then I may just end up with my first big pleasant surprise of the year.
WRITER/DIRECTOR: LARS VON TRIER
STARS: CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG, STELLAN SKARSGARD, STACY MARTIN, SHIA LABEOUF, CHRISTIAN SLATER, SOPHIE KENNEDY CLARK, UMA THURMAN, HUGO SPEER
RUNTIME: 118 MINS APPROX
COUNTRY: DENMARK/GERMANY/FRANCE/BELGIUM/UK
Film Rating: 
